SIXTEEN
ARSENY
I wake to the distant sounds of water, muted engines, and a bicycle bell.
It’s so far away it should barely count as sound.
The room smells like clean linen, last night’s sweat, and the faint citrus bite of whatever soap this hotel thinks passes for luxury.
The curtains leak a thin strip of pale morning.
Caiden is already awake.
He’s behind me, propped on one elbow. His fingertips moving in slow, patient circles along the strip of muscle beside my spine, as if he’s mapping me by touch. As if he has time and nobody is going to knock on this door to remind us this is all temporary.
I don’t move right away. I let him keep doing it because if I open my eyes and acknowledge it, he’ll stop, and it feels too good.
His hand shifts lower, following the curve of my back, and I feel my own body respond with a lazy, satisfied heaviness that I refuse to examine when I've just opened my eyes, and I’m still warm from sleep. “You’re awake,” he says quietly.
“I’m always awake.”
He huffs a laugh. “Weird, because you were drooling on my shoulder five minutes ago.”
“Lies.”
“Would you like me to describe it in detail?” he asks, mildly smug.
I turn my head enough to look at him. His hair is a mess, flattened at one side, sticking up at the other. His mouth has that soft expression it gets when he’s relaxed.
“Do it,” I say, “I will deny it with confidence.”
He smiles as his hand moves again, his thumb pressing at a knot beside my shoulder blade as if he’s trying to undo it. “You’ve got tension here.”
I glare at him. “From what could that possibly be?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he keeps working his thumb into the muscle with quiet persistence.
I close my eyes for a few seconds and focus on his touch, the distant city and the fact of him being here with me.
That fact still hits me in strange waves — not excitement exactly, though there is that, but something else.
Something that I’m not used to having, I think.
“Mm, morning,” he says softly as his hand sliding up my spine. I grunt something that might qualify as a reply as he shifts closer, his chest brushing my back. “How’s your mood?”
“Feral,” I tell him, because it’s easier than saying: happy.
“Thought so,” he murmurs as his lips touch the back of my shoulder. Then again, closer to my neck. I roll onto my back slowly, not taking my eyes off him. He follows without thinking, shifting with me like it’s an automatic response, almost as if not staying close isn’t even an option anymore.
I reach up and grip his jaw with my fingers, tugging him down into a kiss. It’s the kind that says, ‘I’m still here. You’re here. Don’t ruin this by talking.’
Caiden kisses back like he understands exactly what I’m doing. His hand reaches out to cup the side of my face, his thumb stroking along my cheekbone. It’s careful and almost reverent. “We should get up,” he says, breaking the kiss.
The way he says it makes it sound like a suggestion I want to ignore. I lift an eyebrow. “You want to waste this by leaving the bed?”
“We can come back to it,” he says. “We’ve got four days.”
I stare at him. “That is optimism bordering on delusion.”
“Let me have it.” I make a quiet sound that is neither agreement nor refusal. Then I shift, sitting up, running my hand through my hair, trying hard to pretend I’m above domestic mornings when I’m already living one.
Caiden watches me with a look like he’s still surprised I’m here, and he’s enjoying that surprise way too much. “You’re staring,” I tell him.
“Yeah, sometimes I can’t believe you’re real,” he answers. I hold his gaze for a second, then I look away first, because if I don’t then we definitely wont be moving from this bed.
“Get up,” I say, sharply. “Before I decide you’re annoying.”
He laughs, but he moves, disappearing into the bathroom. The shower turns on, and I sit on the edge of the bed, listening to the water for a moment, letting my thoughts organise themselves.
This is the part I don’t know how to do.
I can do distance and the secrecy. I can even do stolen nights, coded calls and the tight, hard line of desire that never has to be explained because it never has to last.
I’ve never done this before — waking up with someone I love, in a different country, watching them move through a room and feeling the quiet tug in my chest that wants to treat this like it’s a normal life.
I stand, pull on trousers, find my shirt, and shake it out, moving around on autopilot. Caiden comes out of the bathroom with damp hair and a towel around his neck. It causes my brain to do something stupid and simple: mine.
I swallow it, but he catches my look, and his mouth curves into a smile. “You alright there?”
“No,” I say automatically.
“That’s the spirit,” he snorts.
We manage a morning that looks like anyone else’s on holiday.
Coffee from the little machine in the corner that tastes like burnt compromise.
Bread that is better than it has any right to be.
Butter. Jam. Caiden eats slowly, like he has all the time in the world, and I pretend not to watch his mouth because that’s a weakness I refuse to advertise.
After, he sits on the edge of the bed with his mug, shoulders relaxed, and legs stretched out, watching me pace. “You’re thinking,” he says.
I glare at him over my coffee. “You’re observant.”
“It’s my job,” he says mildly. Then he tilts his head. “Talk to me.”
I don’t want to. Talking turns things into plans, and plans become promises, and promises become a noose if you pull the rope the wrong way.
But things need to be said, because I need him to understand the problem before it eats us later.
I sit down opposite him and set my mug down carefully. “I spoke to Niko.”
Caiden’s expression shifts at the name, getting his full attention. “Okay?”
I nod once. “I told him everything, that I’m leaving.” Caiden doesn’t interrupt. “It’s funny, he thought I meant deserting,” I add, and I can’t help the faint bite in my voice. “As if I’m going to do it like a drunk idiot with a stolen car.”
Caiden’s mouth twitches. “It’s not the worst plan I’ve heard.” I give him a look, and he raises his hands in surrender, but his eyes stay serious. “What did he say?”
“He told me to do it properly,” I answer. “He told me not to be dramatic and to have something in place before I do it.”
Caiden’s jaw tightens. “He’s not wrong.”
“I know,” I say, flatly, because admitting Niko is right is annoying.
Caiden leans forward slightly. “Did he... take it alright?”
I exhale through my nose. The truth is complicated.
Niko doesn’t approve of anything in the sentimental sense.
He approves of survival and control. He also approves of me not ending up dead in a ditch because I let emotion override sense.
“He didn’t shout,” I say. “That’s his version of approval.
” Caiden’s eyes soften for a second. “He gave me something.” His brows lift as I reach into my wallet, pulling out the folded scrap of paper I’ve been carrying around.
I slide it across the bedspread between us.
Caiden picks it up carefully and reads the number. His eyes flick up to mine. “What is it?”
“Niko says it’s... private work,” I say. “Private military mostly. They approached him once and gave him this number, ‘just in case.’ He kept it.”
Caiden’s mouth tightens. “And now he’s giving it to you.”
“He didn’t say he gave it to me,” I reply. “He slid it across his desk and acted like it didn’t happen.”
Caiden lets out a short breath — half laugh, half disbelief. “That’s so him.”
I nod. “It’s not in Russia.”
Caiden studies the number again, then looks up. “So, you’re thinking... after.”
“Yes,” I say. “Not yet. But after.”
His gaze holds mine. “And Amsterdam?” I don’t answer immediately. The truth is simple, and it makes me uncomfortable. “Is that why you chose here?” I nod. “And because you’re thinking about where we could exist... together,” he adds quietly, in understanding.
I hate how well he reads me. “Yes,” I admit. “I can’t live in the UK.”
“Even if you leave the right way?”
“Especially if I leave the right way,” I say. “If I show up in England after years of joint operations, and shared intelligence, and everybody pretending not to notice me, it looks like something. It looks like coordination and recruitment. It looks like a problem.”
Caiden’s eyes narrow slightly, thinking. “And if you want to go back and visit Niko... If you want… any of your life back.”
“I can’t do that from England,” I say. “Not without it drawing attention. I need somewhere neutral. Somewhere no one cares about and I can disappear if I have to. But also it’s close to you.”
He leans back slowly, absorbing it. Then, because he’s him, he tries to cut the tension with humour.
“You’re sexy when you’re strategic,” he says, lifting his eyebrow as if daring me to deny it.
I take his mug from him, setting it down out of reach, then I climb over him on the bed, pinning him down with my hands on either side of his shoulders.
“That’s one way to respond,” he says, laughing softly.
“Stop talking,” I tell him, then I kiss him hard enough to shut him up properly. He makes a pleased sound into my mouth, his hands gripping my wrists briefly, then sliding up my arms. “Amsterdam could work,” he says quietly, breaking the kiss to speak.
“It could,” I agree. “Or somewhere like it.”
He reaches up and touches my jaw with his fingers. “You’ve got it all planned out, huh?” he says softly.
“Almost, anyway. Come, we’re going out,” I tell him, sliding off him and standing.
He blinks up at me in confusion. “Right now?”
“Yes, because if we stay in here, you’ll keep looking at me like that, and we definitely won’t leave this room. Get dressed, we’re going to museums or something boring. You like boring.”
He laughs again, softer. “You’re a romantic.”
“I am unbearable, thank you very much.” I huff.